Thankful Tree

Can I just say that we {heart} our readers?!? We really do. I got this idea straight from one of you. It was so fabulous that I had to try it. So thanks, June, for sending in your version and the link to one of our favorites Skip to My Lou, who inspired you.

First off find a nice branch with lots of different branches for hanging the thankful leaves from. I had to go to my neighbor’s yard for this, but aren’t the leaves beautiful? I used them to decorate the inside of my vase. I love the color. Once you have some filling inside, arrange your branches to where you like them.

Now you can decorate your vase. I found some fun fall colored ribbon and tied it on. I also had this fun embossed tag (kinds shows weird in the pictures), and add it. I just love the color that is starting to pop!

So once you get to this point you can gather the family around. Explain that this is the Thankful Tree, or Tree of Thanks, or whatever you want to call it. Each person will take a die cut leaf and write something they are grateful for each night. My cutie is thankful for pink flowers. 🙂

After everyone has written, tack your leaf onto your tree. I used some more ribbon, cause really, can you have enough?!?!

And here’s what we look like so far.

I am so excited to get this tree all filled out in thankfulness. Hope you enjoy it too.

What sorts of things do you do to teach your children about being thankful? We love to hear your ideas!!

I did something similar to this…I made a tree out of paper bags and then made leaves out of my daughters hand prints, on fall colored construction paper. I had my daughter think of all of the people in our lives that we are thankful for and we wrote their names on the leaves. Then we used sticky tack to put it all together up on the wall, and we slowly let the leaves fall down (aka take them down) and we pray for that person and then give them the leaf to let them know we are thankful for them and have prayed for them. I found this idea in a paper sent home from my daughters preschool class at church. My daughter (3 years old) has helped with every step (even cutting out tiny pieces of brown bark to glue on the trunk) and she loves to choose a leaf to pray for each day. here is a link to a picture. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1441532&l=445e06c93b&id=1557984386

Trackbacks

[…] The Crafting Chicks have put together easy to follow instructions for you on creating this tree. It’s only November 4th, so not too late to get started! Depending on what you have around your house, this could be a completely FREE craft! […]